I felt my cheeks flush. I felt ridiculous getting caught talking to the ducks like this and having him question my motives for it. I felt more ridiculous for the reason I was talking to a legion of ducks instead of my boyfriend about my feelings for said boyfriend. “Because you told me to feel what I feel at whatever pace I felt it.”
“And I stand by it.”
“I needed to figure some stuff out, and they,” I motioned toward the ducks, “help me when I need to figure stuff out.” He looked at me with that questioning look of his, and I knew I needed to explain it better. “I was straightening up the apartment, and I kept thinking about you. I kept thinking about all the little things you do for me and the way all those things made me feel. Then it kind of just hit me. The way I felt about you was a lot more intense than I thought it was, but I needed to figure out the exact way that I felt for you, and I couldn’t talk to you about it. I’d start editing it, and I wouldn’t get to the right conclusion.” I would have tried to make what I felt more digestible for him. The words settled on him, and I noticed the sad expression in his eyes. I hated it. I hated that I put that look there. “Besides, you were at work.”
He grinned, some of that darkness fading from his eyes. “You don’t have to do that,” he assured me. “I don’twantyou to do that. I don’t want you to edit a single thing you feel when you’re talking to me.” He reached down and moved the painted duck from my knee to the carpet. Once it was there, he took my hand and pulled me up so we were both standing. “Besides, if you talked to me about it, I could talk to you, too.”
“Do you need to talk to me?”
He nodded. His arms wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me closer to him. “You’re not the only person who’sbeen confused about his feelings, you know. I’ve been combing through it too, trying to figure out what I feel about you, and it clicked. When I came in here, and I heard you talking to your ducks, I knew what I wanted that truth to be before you said it.” His eyes met mine, and I was powerless. I couldn’t look away from his beautiful green eyes, shining with emotion. “I love you, too.”
“Say it again?”
“I love you, Matthew Bennett. It took me completely by surprise, but that’s the truth. I’m in love with you.” He brought his lips down to mine. The kiss was gentle, but I felt it down to the tips of my toes. “Now, can we put away the ducks and eat dinner? I’m starving.”
I laughed. We started picking up the ducks and went to the couch. He’d grabbed takeout from a local deli, and he’d gotten my sandwich order perfectly. Of course he did. It was Noah, and he knew me better than anyone ever had. No wonder I’d fallen in love with him twice. We turned on a show, and it felt like nothing had changed except our location. I would have to miss this soon, but not tonight.
“Stay?” I asked him hours later.
He gave me another kiss, and I was no longer left facing a night without the man I loved.
18
TwonightsafterMattwent home, I went back to my place. I had my first night without him in over a month, and I hated it.
My arms felt empty without him in them. My bed felt cold without his heat warming the other side of it. Every room felt too quiet without his music or the sound of his keyboard or his terrible jokes. Every surface looked too neat without one of his rogue rubber ducks sitting on it. My documentaries were suddenly boring without his color commentary and terrible impressions of the narrators.
My life was justlesswithout his presence.
The idea of doing this for a few more months before we even opened the conversation about living together seemed like too much. That was too long to wait to start planning the future I wanted with him. Now that I knew that I was in love with him, I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to risk losing him, risk losing this happiness and this feeling. I’d caught lightning in a bottle, and there was no way I was letting it go.
An idea formed in the middle of the night.
A stupid, ridiculous idea.
I thought it’d be gone when I woke up, but it wasn’t. A week later, the idea was still there. It grew every time I looked at a place in my apartment where Mattshouldbe and saw it empty. Every time we kissed goodbye at the end of the night, it grew. On the nights when we slept over at either of our places, it doubled or tripled in size. It was a stupid, ridiculous idea, but it had taken root in my head, and it consumed every waking thought.
It wasn’t going anywhere on its own.
That night, I called my parents. I knew that they didn’t ever do anything on Sunday evenings, and I knew that they’d never say no to a call from me. I also knew that, if this was a bad idea, they’d pull me gently back down to earth. And if it wasn’t a terrible idea, they’d tell me that, too. After all, they had seen me and Matt together in high school. They’d seen the love and the heartbreak, the ups and the downs, and everything in between. They knew the plans we’d once made, and they knew how it broke me when those plans didn’t come to fruition.
“Mamma, Babbo!” I greeted them when they answered the call, their faces appearing smushed together on my screen.
“Noah, what a lovely surprise,” my mother cooed into the phone. “You look so good! So happy!”
“I am, Mamma,” I told her. “So very happy.” I watched my smile falter in the small image of myself in the corner. “Lonely though, now that Matt’s gone back to his apartment.”
“He lives how far from you?” My father’s voice was ever reasonable.
I liked to think I inherited his reasonable head, but recent ideas had me questioning this. “Less than ten minutes if there’s no traffic.” I felt ridiculous but wasn’t this whole phone call about the ridiculous. “But it’s not about the miles between us. It’s the nights. It’s the fact that he’s not here right now, and I know he won’t be here tonight.”
“You love him.” My mother wasn’t asking a question. She was stating a fact, a fact I already knew and accepted and embraced.
I loved Matthew Bennett. He was the only man on this earth that I’d ever loved, and I thought he might be the only person I was ever even capable of loving. Even when I didn’t know if I could feel that for him, if I could ever feel that again for anyone, he’d been committed to me. He’d tried anyway, and he never made me feel less than for it. My only other serious boyfriend hadn’t been able to handle it. He’d belittled me. He made me feel broken, and it broke me down. Chipped away at me, little by little.
Matt had built me up.
That stupid, ridiculous idea suddenly felt a little less stupid and ridiculous.
